tangs with ich! :O

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pugpops

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jul 16, 2012
Messages
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hey everyone... this morning, i woke up to a yellow tang and a powder blue tang with ich because of the temperature in the tank rising a couple degrees! the tangs had sooo many white little "pimple" dots on them, but they didnt seem too stressed out. i got 2 large bags and filled them with ice and floated them in the tank for a couple hours and kept refilling the bags with ice. now, the temperature has pretty much returned to normal and the tangs look MUCH better. alas, they still look to have just the smallest and tiniest white dots on their fins and not a lot on their body. will the ich entirely go away soon??
 
No it wont. Your tangs have ich so that means that soon all of your other fish will get ich as well. The best method of treatment is to put all of your fish in a differant tank and slowly lower the salinitly, this method is called hypo. It will kill the ich and them you can add the fish back into the tank
 
Try feeding garlic or garlic soaked food to your fish. This will boost their immune system and prevent ich. Better survival rate.
 
Million8 said:
Try feeding garlic or garlic soaked food to your fish. This will boost their immune system and prevent ich. Better survival rate.

Garlic does absolutely nothing for ich. It is not proven as an immune system booster or a cure or a preventative . It's just an appetite stimulant . Hypo or copper are the only cure. These rumors are dangerous to the fish keeping hobby and need to be stopped .
 
well.. i don't have a hospital tank set up yet to do the hypo method, so would taking the fish to my local saltwater store be okay so they could keep it hospitalized? or would that do absolutely nothing to help? btw, my blue powder tang is pretty stressed out and is trying to scratch himself on the sand and rocks! i hate ich!
 
I wouldn't trust them to cure my fish. Buy a big rubber maid tote and use that as a qt. Treat with hypo or copper( I prefer hypo) and leave your main tank fishless for 8 weeks. Hypo will calm your powder blue tang down and relieve some of the stress.
 
Garlic contains allicin, the active ingredient that boost immune system. It is present in a lot of applications in the medical field and is proven to strengthen the immune system. Even the popular product selcon contains allicin as the active ingredient and formula one contains allicin. It's not the garlic that benefits fish but the active ingredient in garlic - Allicin.
 
Allicin has antifungal , antibacterial and antiviral properties. Ich is a parasite . Once again garlic is not now or will ever be proven to cure or help with ich.
 
As stated above, garlic will NOT cure ich. It may help the fish deal with it better but it is not a cure unfortunately.

Hypo and copper are the only two KNOWN methods of killing ich completely. You may get lucky and the fish may fight it off but it can still lay dormant in your tank and can for sure re-infect the fish, thats why it's recommended to remove the fish and let the tank sit for 6-8 weeks. This will ensure that any ich in the tank is killed and will make it safe again for the fish.

How big is the tank they are in now? Can you catch them to put them into a qt? Depedning on the size of the tangs you may want to go with a rubbermaid tote as it will be big enough for the tangs.
 
the tank i have now is a 120 gal reef tank. i would have to try for a couple hours to catch the tangs but wouldnt chasing them around stress them out even more? and as i said before, i do not have a QT set up anywhere, and i dont think i really understand the "rubbermaid tote" idea (sorry)... so am i supposed to fill the rubbermaid tote with the saltwater from my tank and put the fish in there for a while? i wouldnt have a filter or anything for it! are you telling me i have to buy more stuff? D:
 
pugpops said:
the tank i have now is a 120 gal reef tank. i would have to try for a couple hours to catch the tangs but wouldnt chasing them around stress them out even more? and as i said before, i do not have a QT set up anywhere, and i dont think i really understand the "rubbermaid tote" idea (sorry)... so am i supposed to fill the rubbermaid tote with the saltwater from my tank and put the fish in there for a while? i wouldnt have a filter or anything for it! are you telling me i have to buy more stuff? D:

Unfortunately yes you will need to but more stuff. This is part of the hobby. If fish are not properly quarantined before adding to the tank then you risk spreading ich along with other parasites and disease. The 2 ways of curing ich hypo and copper are not reef safe, meaning they cannot be used in a tank with inverts, coral, live rock or live sand. This is why you need to move the fish to an empty for quarantine.

And as stated above garlic has never been proven as an immune booster and really its effect as an appetite booster is also questionable and nor real repeatable studies have been done to prove garlic usefulness. Its one of those fads that caught on faster than the science.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-10/sp/index.php

Its even been reported garlic use can result in liver damage over significant periods. This however is just reported, not confirmed, as with everything else garlic related.
 
Go get yourself a cheap tank 20 or 29 gal. and an inexpensive hang on back filter. Take some of your filter media from your main tank to seed the qt tank. If you don't have much experience or a refractometer I wouldn't try to do hypo. Get some seachems cupramine which is a copper med. it is not as harsh on fish as other forms of copper. Follow the directions and the fish will be fine.
 
I've used a Rubbermaid tub to hospitalize fish before. Basically instead of buying a tank, I bought that and used a cheap filter on it and treated for the ich. Unfortunately, if you have other fish in the tank, they most likely will get it to as they've been exposed now. To rid yourself of ich for good you have to get all your fish out of your tank and let the parasites life cycle run its course. Until that happens, you will probably always have ich present in your tank.
 
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